VIEWPOINT – Fifty-year-old vision just as potent today

IT’S a moot point whether the founding fathers of the EU, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, were driven more by hope or fear when they launched the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) on 23 July, 1952.

European Voice

7/24/02, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 8:14 AM CET

The fear factor was certainly evident. Although the Second World War had ended seven years earlier, huge swathes of Europe still bore the scars of the conflict.

Both men had been deeply affected by the experience of war, especially Schuman, who was held by the Gestapo before escaping to join the French resistance.

His compatriot Monnet, an adopted Brit, shared Winston Churchill’s view that a United States of Europe was the best guarantee of peace.

While Churchill wavered in his belief – he was particularly disparaging about the idea of cosying up to the “dreadful” Belgians – Monnet and Schuman were committed to a vision that was both symbolic and practical.

The fundamental idea behind placing French and German coal and steel production under a common supranational high authority (the forerunner of the European Commission) was to make war between the countries unthinkable.

On that basis alone it worked – but, of course, it was to be the acorn from which grew the EU as we know it today: the ECSC also set up the first Council of Ministers, the Common Assembly, which became the European Parliament, and the Court of Justice.

Pat Cox, the president of the European Parliament, captured the mood of many this week when he wrote that the Union’s founding fathers “saw all too clearly what was, but they were prepared to dream of what could be. They had the courage of their European convictions.

“They opened for Europe a pathway to reconciliation and progress which none had walked before. We are the beneficiaries of that legacy and that foresight.”

Not everyone would agree with that; indeed, most of the EU’s 350 million citizens have almost certainly never heard of Monnet and Schuman.

Sadly, relatively few people attended this week’s flag-lowering ceremony to formally mark the end of the treaty which set up the ECSC.

But at least the two French statesmen lived long enough to see their acorn grow (Schuman died in 1963, Monnet in 1979).

Perhaps the most fitting tribute to their achievements could come from another Frenchman, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, leader of the Convention charged with writing the next chapter in the future of Europe.

It’s a tall order. Monnet’s fledgling Union consisted of just six members; Giscard d’Estaing is searching to find the right formula for a community of 25 or more.

The Franco-German motor remains crucial, but the engine of Europe is far more complex today.

Winning the peace in 2002 may turn out to be much harder than in 1952, when the bitter experience of war focused minds, but the foundations are there and for that, as Mr Cox so eloquently reminds us, we should all be grateful.